Reasons-responsiveness and degrees of responsibility
Philosophical Studies (forthcoming)
| Abstract | Ordinarily, we take moral responsibility to come in degrees. Despite this commonplace, theories of moral responsibility have focused on the minimum threshold conditions under which agents are morally responsible. But this cannot account for our practices of holding agents to be more or less responsible. In this paper we remedy this omission. More specifically, we extend an account of reasonsresponsiveness due to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza according to which an agent is morally responsible only if she is appropriately receptive to and reactive to reasons for action. Building on this, we claim that the degree to which an agent is responsible will depend on the degree to which she is able to recognize and react to reasons. To analyze this, we appeal to relations of comparative similarity between possible worlds, arguing that the degree to which an agent is reasons-reactive depends on the nearest possible world in which given sufficient reason to do otherwise, she does so. Similarly, we argue that the degree to which an agent is reasons-receptive will depend on the intelligibility of her patterned recognition of reasons. By extending an account of reasons-responsiveness in these ways, we are able to rationalize our practice of judging people to be more or less responsible. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,865 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesPatrick Todd & Neal A. Tognazzini (2008). A Problem for Guidance Control. Philosophical Quarterly 58 (233):685-692.
John J. Davenport (2002). Fischer and Ravizza on Moral Sanity and Weakness of Will. Journal of Ethics 6 (3):235–259.
Neal Judisch (2005). Responsibility, Manipulation and Ownership: Reflections on the Fischer/Ravizza Program. Philosophical Explorations 8 (2):115-130.
Jules Holroyd (2013). Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility by Nelkin. [REVIEW] Analysis 73 (1):198-202.
James D. Steadman (forthcoming). Moral Responsibility and Motivational Mechanisms. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.
John Martin Fischer & Mark Ravizza (1998). Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility. Cambridge University Press.
Neal Judisch (2007). Reasons-Responsive Compatibilism and the Consequences of Belief. Journal of Ethics 11 (4):357 - 375.
Alfred R. Mele (2006). Fischer and Ravizza on Moral Responsibility. Journal of Ethics 10 (3):283-294.
Markus E. Schlosser (forthcoming). Conscious Will, Reason-Responsiveness, and Moral Responsibility. Journal of Ethics:1-28.
Daan Evers (2009). Humean Agent-Neutral Reasons? Philosophical Explorations 12 (1):55 – 67.
Manuel Vargas (2009). Reasons and Real Selves. Ideas y Valores 58 (141):67-84.
Helen Steward (2008). Moral Responsibility and the Irrelevance of Physics: Fischer's Semi-Compatibilism Vs. Anti-Fundamentalism. Journal of Ethics 12 (2):129 - 145.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2012-06-08Total downloads37 ( #32,520 of 556,803 )Recent downloads (6 months)5 ( #16,099 of 556,803 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
